Editor's Note: Actor Edu Diaz, the author of the following thought piece on censorship, is currently performing his theatrical work LIPSTICK --based on the story of Peruvian writer Linda Morales Caballero--as part of the 2026 NYC Fringe Festival.
I've been performing my whole life.
Not just on stage, but also in the way many queer people are conditioned from childhood: we edit ourselves to soften and to disappear. You learn early that being fully visible comes with a price. So you develop a mask that can feel like your face.
For a long time, I believed I had outgrown that instinct. Lately, I'm not so sure anymore. Because now, on top of my queerness, I'm an immigrant in the country of ICE. Censorship is no longer abstract or distant: what you say, what you post, what you support, what you choose to stay silent about.
What does it mean to speak openly about politics, about identity, about injustice, when the consequences can go beyond reputation, when they can impact your right to remain? What does it mean to support certain causes, to take certain stances, knowing that visibility itself can become a risk?
There's a question underneath, brutally devastating in 2026: Do I censor myself to stay? Or do I risk everything to be fully seen? I won't judge anyone who goes quiet; silence can be its own form of survival, and I understand that calculus intimately. But naming the pressure, that's the least we can do.
LIPSTICK, the show I'm opening at the NYC Fringe, lives inside that conflict. And although I don't have clear answers yet, maybe a simple but magical lipstick will bring some clarity to this dystopia.
Follow Edu Diaz on Instagram
